Hi

A website I'm working with has a strange problem.

When I use a header checker, (have tried several) I get status 500 Internal Server Error but when I go to the page it returns status 200 OK.

I have tried to disable javaScript, turned off Cookies and used several diffrent User Agents. What did I miss?

Google has a cached copy off the site so it isn't really a SEO problem.

It is only the startpage that returns status 500, all other pages return 200 OK.

The site is on a IIS 6.0.

Any sugestions?

>When I use a header checker, (have tried several) I get status 500 Internal Server Error but when I go to the page it returns status 200 OK.

So how are you viewing the headers when you "go to the page"?

What header sniffer are you using?

Hi I have been using online tools like
http://www.webuildpages.com/header-checker/
http://www.seoconsultants.com/tools/headers.asp

Live http headers shows status 200 OK....
I also found this one http://web-sniffer.net/ and it also returns 200 OK...

I have been using User Agent Switcher to change User Agent.

Probably its just the first two tools that returns the wrong header info?

I'd suggest rexswain.com/httpview.html

That one returned:

Receiving Header:
HTTP/1.1·500·Internal·Server·Error(CR)(LF)
Connection:·close(CR)(LF)
Date:·Tue,·16·Dec·2008·13:15:13·GMT(CR)(LF)
Server:·Microsoft-IIS/6.0(CR)(LF)
X-Powered-By:·ASP.NET(CR)(LF)
X-AspNet-Version:·2.0.50727(CR)(LF)
Cache-Control:·private(CR)(LF)
Expires:·Tue,·16·Dec·2008·13:15:13·GMT(CR)(LF)
Content-Type:·text/html;·charset=utf-8(CR)(LF)
(CR)(LF)

Google has a cached copy off the site so it isn't really a SEO problem.


I'd bank on that tool, any chance the cached copy was prior to this issue? In Google's cached version check the URL and be certain your are checking the http header for the same URL Google has cached because in some cases the cached version can be a different URL....

Any chance you see a page because it's cached on your machine?

These are just the questions I'd ask myself in your situation...

>Any chance you see a page because it's cached on your machine?

right. also live http can fool you if the page is cached in FF.

Can you tell me what the site url is, and I'll take a look.

I know what the problem is now...

The server required
Accept-Language: xxx...
in the header request.

We built our own server checker and modified the request and found that the server or page required Accept-Language: to be set...

Thanks for the input.